Money raises an ethical issue

So, I just watched a movie in my Humanities class called Examined life, by Astra Taylor. It was a very interesting movie that combines clips from eight different influential philosophers who talks about matters relating to philosophy. One of the most intriguing philosophers that caught my attention was Peter Singer, one of the philosophers who talks about the ethical issues regarding money and expenditure. Singer was concerned on the ethical issue of how people never seem to see the fact that money can fulfill their moral obligations to help other people. He wants to raise people’s consciousness regarding the ethical issue by questioning on how people should spend their money.

One of the most fascinating examples that best exemplifies his views regarding ethical issues of “how we spend our money?” was a question concerning expensive shoes and a little kid in a shallow pond. The example goes out asking people about what will someone, who’s wearing expensive shoes, do when they see a child drowning in a shallow pond. The answer to this rhetorical question will surely to safe that child from drowning and forget about the shoes. But, the expensive shoes could have been donated to organization such as UNICEF to help children in poor countries, save them from simple diseases, and help more than one child. Having this in mind arouses a question on which will you choose? Will you save one or save hundreds? If you save one, you will feel good and think that you have fulfill your moral obligations to safe a person at that moment. On the other hand, if you choose the second option, you will likely feel bad for not saving hundreds of children suffering from curable illness.

Given the current situation will most likely foster our incentive to help others by spending our money carefully and to spend on what really matters. However, having this in mind, there is a third option that people can choose. The rich person could have save the child, abandon the shoes, and then donate his or her money to a charity organization to help the needy children. This idea is generated through the possibility that the rich person might have been generous enough to forget all the effort he put on acquiring that pair of shoes. This option will certainly benefit everyone, if the option was provided. Yet, this third option raises another question relating to the ethics Singer asked us to think, will the rich person actually be kind enough to spend additional money to the poor people? Then again, this questions our ethical issues on how we could have helped others.

Singer also mention on how money can help to reduce or prevent suffering of the people. He mention the fact that people have moral obligations to help others, either based on moral, ethical consciousness or based on religion teachings on how everyone should help each other. People always understand that they are able to help if they are willing to do so. On the contrary, people never seem to really engage in thinking on how they can actually help. One example to proof this is when singer mentions on how a person does not really feel guilty for spending one thousand dollars on a suit, as he proclaims that his expenditure does not harm anyone. What that person doesn’t know is that by not spending his limited amount of money on expensive products, he is actually benefiting the society by laying the money idle and creates an opportunity to donate that money to actually help others. This moral problem on not being able to think broadly on how money can actually helps people test our moral obligations to help others. Are we justified enough to consider ourselves being a good person? Are we fully utilizing our money to help others? As not all people tend to care about what is going on around the world and how money can be a source to relief those problems.

All this sums up to the final question of how can we spend our money properly to fully help others and erase this ethical issue? And the answer is that with the opportunity of the money we have, we can still contribute to assist others and make each other life’s better. This all relates to Singer’s captivating sentence, quote “Because we live, something has gone better than it would have otherwise. We contributed in however smaller way to make the world a better place.” (Examined Life).

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“The Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living” (Socrates)